Thursday, June 19, 2008

Senate Housing Bill Requires eBay, Amazon, Google, and All Credit Card Companies to Report Transactions to the Government Washington, DC - Hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd's (D) 630-page Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that affects the privacy and operation of nearly all of America’s small businesses. The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government.

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented: "This is a provision with astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the bill just this week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay's PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America's small businesses are breathtaking."

1 comment:

This will place the hooks into getting your Ebay or any online sales account linked up to the IRS, this lovely piece of work is being seen as the first step towards Internet taxation.

Buy online out of state? The taxes that you haven’t paid on out of state purchases will be able to be tracked, and you will either be billed, or audited, and fined, by the IRS.

And here's the clincher:

"The provision, which was added by the bill's managers without debate this week, would require the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information on nearly every electronic transaction to the federal government."